Follow up with your doctors in 1-2 months. Call now and get an appointment.
You should go to see your doctor around 4-8 weeks following the operation. If you don’t have an appointment to see your doctor yet, call them ASAP and tell them you are having a parathyroid operation and need to see them for labs about 4-8 weeks from the day of surgery.
If you have an endocrinologist, see them first. Make the call and get an appointment to see them 1-2 months post op. We will make sure all your doctors have everything from us (a cover letter about you, a photo of your tumor, and a copy of the operative report and pathology report).
Some doctors want to see you a few days after the operation but this is only really necessary if you have kidney problems and you have a nephrologist who follows your kidney function. There are some special patients like those on dialysis or in renal failure that need to see their doctor within 48 hours of surgery. In almost all other cases, the blood tests you get after the operation for calcium and PTH should wait at least 4 weeks and you can see your endocrinologist or family doctor / internist after that.
Getting your blood checked
We used to give every patient a lab slip to get their blood work done 2 months after the operation. We have found that most patients will be getting this done through their doctor so we do not give a lab order form to all patients any more. Sometimes we do, but it is not routine for every patient since your doctors will do it and we were doing things twice.
It is best if you arrange for your followup visit with your endocrinologist (or other doctor) prior to your operation, but if you have not it is not a big deal. Just call their office after your operation and tell them you need to come in for followup in a month or two and they will typically order the labs for you to check the calcium and PTH.
Information sent to your doctors
Within a few days of the operation we will fax the details of your operation to all of your doctors telling them about your operation and what we found. We will include a photo of the parathyroid tumor(s) we removed, PTH hormone levels taken from you about 1 hour after the operation, and a report on your other parathyroid glands and your thyroid gland. They will get a letter from us, and they will get a copy of the formal operative report and pathology report. About 10% of doctors receive this information via snail-mail instead of a fax, but in any case, they should already have this information when you see them at 4-8 weeks post-op. Our expectation is that over 99% of our patients are cured for life.
Show the “Instructions for Your Doctor” page to your doctor
This app has a page that we want you to show to your doctor. It has the post op instructions about calcium, PTH, osteoporosis drugs, etc. It also has a few teaching points that most doctors need to see. Click Here to see the “Instructions for Your Doctor Afterwards” page.